Whilst Sterlingcoin 1.4 sits in the wings waiting to be released I thought I would write a quick short guide to running a more secure wallet on your Windows home computer:

1. Download and install Comodo Firewall, Peerblock and Avira Antivirus.
2. Download and install Oracle VirtualBox.
3. Check whether you are running 32bit or 64bit Windows and then download either the 32bit or 64bit version of Ubuntu 14.10
4. Open Oracle VirtualBox and create a new virtual machine for Ubuntu/Linux and select the appropriate architecture (32bit/64bit).
5. Ideally you should be creating this virtual machine on an external usb drive which can stay disconnected whenever possible.
6. During install make sure to set passwords for startup of the Ubuntu install and also for login to the Ubuntu environment on the Virtual Machine.
7. Once Ubuntu has finished installing and you are on the desktop, open a terminal (Crtl+Alt+T) and type "sudo apt-get update" and hit enter, it will request your password you set at install.
8. Next, still in the terminal, type "sudo apt-get upgrade" and hit enter, this time it will not require your password as you entered it previously and are still in the same session.
9. Once the updates finish installing go to the menu bar of Oracle Virtual Box which your Ubuntu installation is running in and go to 'Devices' and at the bottom click on 'Insert Guest Additions CD Image'. Ubuntu will pick up the installer and ask whether you wish to run the installer, click 'Run', it will request your password. Once it finishes restart Ubuntu.
10. Once Ubuntu restarts follow this guide here - http://sterlingcoin.org.uk/support/linux/install-sterlingcoin-wallet-linux/

This I hope will help those that don't have a huge technical know how to at least secure their systems somewhat better than they may be now.